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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22874131">Given</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/fellowshipper/pseuds/fellowshipper'>fellowshipper</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BDSM Done Wrong, Loki's mind is a bag of cats, M/M, Unhealthy Relationships, Warning: Loki (Marvel)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 08:15:07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,868</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22874131</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/fellowshipper/pseuds/fellowshipper</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki's idea of "kink negotiation" involves a lot more emotional maneuvering than one might expect.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Loki/Tony Stark</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>86</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Given</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>All the other WIPs are still...wipping...but I had this idea for a ficlet that wouldn't go away. </p>
<p>This is set in some nebulous time after Avengers but in a world where TDW and IM3 haven't happened/possibly won't ever happen. </p>
<p>Loki is very much Loki in this, and I feel like I should apologize for that. Sorry.</p>
<p>The "BDSM done wrong" tag comes from the fact that Loki is who and what he is. There's blood and some questionable application of "safe, sane, and consensual," so please proceed with caution if that is likely to be a problem for you.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tony’s body is fragile.</p>
<p>It’s strong for a human, certainly, with lean muscle and carved arms that, while not as ridiculously overwrought as Thor’s or even Rogers’, are firm and evidence of many long hours spent in the forge. The hands are not that of the idle rich, as his wealth would otherwise permit, but are calloused and scarred by both labor and injuries. His chest, even as distorted as it is around the device ensuring his heart isn’t impaled by dozens of tiny bits of shrapnel still lingering near the muscle, is firm to the touch.</p>
<p>But for all his physical strength, for all his larger-than-life personality, for all his sharp wit and fierce intelligence, Anthony Stark is still only a human—weak, full of soft gaps to be exploited and soft tissue that would give under the slightest pressure, full of warm blood that would spill like water through a broken dam the moment one of those precious arteries was gouged.</p>
<p>Loki finds himself considering these unpleasant truths often—more often than usual as of late—and tries not to let his discomfort show on his face. With centuries of experience of hiding his disdain from others at court, he knows he can school his expression into one of careful indifference so as not to betray that he thinks of Tony’s bones as being no stronger than that of a bird’s, so imminently prone to snapping that it’s no surprise at all that the man should spend so much time encased in a suit of armor.</p>
<p>They kiss, and all that occupies Loki’s mind is the realization that he would sink his teeth straight through the lips and tongue so politely pressing against and into his own.</p>
<p>Tony nuzzles against the side of his neck, burying his face in the warm shelter offered in the dip of his shoulder, and it forces Loki to do the same. Tony’s eyes are closed, and his breath falls light and warm against Loki’s neck; Loki’s eyes are peeled open and his breath comes quick and hard, almost the pant of a frightened animal.</p>
<p>The great Tony Stark, renowned philanderer, the man who has never been told no, the man who has used his charm and smarts and money to woo anyone he’s ever wanted into his bed, is so damnably gentle and cautious that Loki hates him for it. Hates him possibly more than he’s hated his overbearing, distant father, more than his arrogant, idolized-by-all brother, more than his own accursed skin that burns icy cold and the color of the ocean below the veneer of Asgardian respectability.</p>
<p>Loki expects—and has demanded more than once—nails scoring his flesh, blades at his throat, acid and exposed electrical wiring and scorching flame and the long, razor-sharp talons of the Chitauri. He expects to be suffocated, the air driven from his lungs until even the mere thought of breathing burns him. He dreams of claws squeezing around his neck, slipping now and then as they open rings of bleeding cuts; his teeth clench when instead, Tony trails his fingers, feather-light, across his throat and along the sharp line of his jaw, as if he’s anything to be treated so delicately.</p>
<p>It aches inside him, something deep and gnarled and forgotten, when Tony looks at him with eyes as warm and rich as the expensive whiskey he’s shared with Loki so many times already. A steel rod of cold panic lodges in Loki’s chest when Tony cups his face but leaves just the barest hint of space between his palms and Loki’s cheeks, as though he’s afraid to touch not because of the Jotun’s curse, but for fear of invoking a different sort of terror. Then slowly, very slowly, he closes the gap, allowing Loki to get used to first the heat of his hands and then the weight of them against his skin.</p>
<p>It’s gentle, so <em>painfully</em> gentle, that Loki has bitten his lips raw and bloody—and that, too, Tony was slow and deliberate about wiping away with measured swipes of his tongue.</p>
<p>The human is brilliant, certainly by his own kind’s standards, but even by Loki’s. He is no psychic, though. He can’t simply pry whatever information he pleases directly from another’s head. There are moments, however, when he turns the full weight of those dark eyes on Loki, backed by his powerful brain, that Loki catches himself ready to shrink back in a pitiful attempt to protect himself and the tempest in his mind. His fingers twitch, eager for the reassurance of a blade in his hand, and he fantasizes about exploiting one of those many soft places he’s cataloged. His entire body tightens inward, coiling and ready to strike, because it will be easier to slaughter the first person to show him kindness in longer than he can remember than to expose himself further to those probing glances.</p>
<p><em>Who did this to you? </em>He expects to hear, already anticipating the feeling of Tony digging his fingers into his ribs and peeling them open to reveal the heart fluttering in its confines as quickly as a startled rabbit’s before its prey. <em>What happened to you? What made you like this?</em></p>
<p>He freezes, jaw clenching so tightly his teeth groan in protest, when Tony reaches forward to brush his knuckles against the prominent jut of Loki’s cheekbone. For a brief, insane moment, Loki imagines that knuckle digging into his eye socket and plucking the gelatinous mass free of its moorings, a god’s eye to serve as a grotesque keepsake for Tony’s trophy room. At the very least, he expects a slap, sharp and stinging, and a cruel laugh.</p>
<p>He receives worse, he thinks, in the form of lips—that have pressed such tender praise into his skin until it sears him—turning upward just slightly at the corners, sad but somehow understanding. His eye remains unharmed, and the touch against his cheek is soft and fleeting before the hand retreats again.</p>
<p>Tony says nothing, and Loki wants to break his bird bones until they pierce his flesh and form a frame upon which he might be hanged and martyred appropriately.</p>
<p>The first time they fuck—and Loki absolutely refuses to consider the act by any other terms—Tony is as sure of himself as ever, but with just enough hesitation to hint at how out of his depths he feels in this new arrangement. He’s good. Fantastic, even, if Loki were in the habit of delivering compliments. They move together in an improvised dance that, nevertheless, both their bodies know well, if not precisely with each other. They lay together afterwards as they wait for the sweat to dry from their bodies and for their breathing to return to normal, and Loki conjures a dagger to conceal it under the hand held flat against the bed, just outside of where Tony might be able to see it in the darkness.</p>
<p>That generous, unsuspecting, <em>foolish </em>human curls against his side, worming his way under Loki’s arm to pillow his head on the side of Loki’s chest, beard tickling Loki’s skin—and then, unaware of the danger he is willingly and gleefully placing himself in, closes his eyes.</p>
<p>Loki watches, air trapped in his lungs, as Tony’s own breathing slows to a steady rhythm and as his eyelids twitch as he falls deeper and deeper into unconsciousness. Such trust, freely given to the worst possible creature, the one which has never done anything to earn it.</p>
<p>Loki doesn’t notice how tightly his fingers have begun to grip the blade of his dagger until he feels the pool of blood developing under his hand. It comes away warm and dripping, and he takes a moment to observe it in the soft glow of the arc reactor, telling himself it means nothing that Tony’s own heart is penetrating the darkness Loki has worked so hard to cultivate around himself.</p>
<p>It means nothing, it <em>is </em>nothing, and so he <em>feels </em>nothing as he (gently) rolls the still-sleeping Tony onto his back and leans over him, blood-soaked fingers leaving streaks of red across the man’s face as Loki traces a path from forehead to chin. He’s still so young by Loki’s own concept of time, barely more than a newborn, yet his humanity is stamped on him with fine lines and wrinkles, with the first few gray hairs beginning to crop up at his temples and in his beard.</p>
<p>He told Loki once that Loki himself looked calmer in his sleep, that his normally sharp features seemed to round off somehow, that Loki appeared, for once, to be at peace. It was placating nonsense meant to humanize a monster, Loki thought, something intended to help Tony rationalize to himself how he could fight side by side with the Avengers but then crawl into the shadows with their enemy come nightfall. The lie was doubly revealed in how the very opposite is true for Tony, when the carefree, sharp-tongued mortal becomes agitated as soon as sleep claims him. The nightmares which so clearly occupy his thoughts by day remain hidden until his need for rest demands payment, at which point the beasts plaguing him take hold.</p>
<p>Loki has watched many nights as Tony’s face twitches in his sleep, as the line in his brow deepens and his chin quivers. He’s watched Tony turn and fuss, sheets twisting around him as he rolls from side to side. He’s pretended to remain asleep when Tony gives up and resigns himself to staring at the wall or the ceiling (or Loki’s back, presumably) until the sky outside the windows begins to lighten enough that he can claim to just be an early riser and not, in fact, a desperate insomniac. He’s said and given away nothing as Tony, clearly frustrated, kicks his legs free of the tangled bedding and wanders off to his workshop or to a meeting or to otherwise distract himself from his ever-tumultuous thoughts.</p>
<p>And yet luck would have it that this night, the first in which they shared each other’s bodies and not just personal space or even just a bed, <em>this </em>would be the night Tony’s demons grant him the privilege of deep, comfortable sleep.</p>
<p>At a monster’s side.</p>
<p>Loki might have found the irony delightful if not for his preoccupation with running his hand across Tony’s face and down the vulnerable column of his throat, bare and pale in the blue-white of the reactor. He looks almost ethereal, at once cast in harsh shadows and eerie light, something not precisely of Midgard despite being made of the very best of it. Tony has every reason that night, of all times, to sleep lightly and fitfully, and yet he seems to rest for the first time Loki can remember.</p>
<p>And so Loki, being what he is and will always be, decides to punish that trust.</p>
<p>He leans in closer, pupils contracting in the glow of the arc reactor, hand gliding down Tony’s chest to curl around the reactor housing. Tony continues to sleep, even as Loki pried his nails into the steel rings forming the casing. His hand, still covered in a thick coat of blood and continuing to bleed from the open cuts in his fingers and palm, scrabble against the reactor, dimming the light and forcing it to take on a darker, more sinister hue. Tony only stirs enough to grunt and smack his lips a few times, oblivious still to the danger he has willingly placed himself in.</p>
<p>Frustrated by his inability to pry the reactor free—due to his blood-slicked hand, surely, and not any failure of courage on his part—Loki vanishes the knife and rolls onto his side to cling to the edge of the bed and feign sleep until Tony inevitably wakes before the birds and wanders off. Except that this time, <em>this </em>time, Tony sleeps late into the morning, all the more infuriating when he notices the dried blood caked on his chest and the tell-tale marks of fingertips streaking across and around the reactor. Surely, Loki thinks, this will be the end of it, whatever “it” is between them. Tony will understand at last how poor his judgment is, banish Loki from his bedroom and his life in general, and that will be that.</p>
<p>But no. Tony only raises an eyebrow at him and then offers a closer look if he cares to join him in the shower, all with that same lopsided smirk and mischievous glint in his eyes.</p>
<p>It happens again after that. And again. And again. Each time, Loki thinks it will be the last, that after ridding himself of the sick lust flooding his body that Tony will realize what a terrible lapse of judgment he’s made—terrible even for him—and come to his senses. Instead, Tony sleeps longer. More easily. Loki wakes to find a warm and solid body beside him and not simply the cold space left behind.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I’m going to kill you,” Loki announces one day over a late-morning breakfast of French toast and bacon. His food is untouched, the pat of butter on his toast long since melted and slid off to the side of the plate. Tony, meanwhile, is finishing up, swirling his last piece of bread in the remains of the syrup on his plate before looking up at Loki, brow creased.</p>
<p>“What, like, right now?” His gaze falls to Loki’s uneaten meal. “It’s not that bad. I mean, I know I’m not much of a cook, but seriously, it’s not that bad.”</p>
<p>“At some point,” Loki answers coolly, unflinching. “Today. Tomorrow. In a week, a month, a year, I don’t know. But we both know how this will end. We both know what I am. You’re too intelligent to keep fooling yourself into believing anything else.”</p>
<p>Tony stares at him for a few moments, chewing and at last swallowing the last piece of his breakfast before casually wiping his mouth with a napkin and then taking a long drink from the coffee mug at his elbow. It’s his second cup this morning, and he’s only just beginning to really wake.</p>
<p>“You know I was supposed to die in my twenties? Maybe early thirties, depending on who you ask. Either way. I was a bit of a . . . wild child, let’s say. That’s really just polite tabloid speak for raging pain in the ass. Hard to believe, I know. But it’s true. There was a betting pool and everything about when I’d OD or die of alcohol poisoning or blow my brains out on a coke binge or whatever. It was pretty fucked up.”</p>
<p>Another sip.</p>
<p>“But I made it out of the twenty-seven club. Then twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. Thirty came and went without anything happening. Thirty-one. Thirty-two. And hey, before you know it, I’m staring down the barrel at forty, and look: still alive and well. Mostly.”</p>
<p>Loki opens his mouth to reply. Closes it. Frowns. Tony, if he notices, gets up to clear his dishes, stealing a piece of bacon off Loki’s plate in the process.</p>
<p>“I was supposed to take over the family business and go on being a good little war profiteer helping my country blow up people on the other side of the planet for imaginary reasons. I was supposed to die in a cave over there. Actually, I was probably supposed to die in a car crash with my parents a long time ago, but I was too hungover that morning and so they left me at home.”</p>
<p>Patience finally wearing thin, Loki casts an annoyed glance at Tony as he circles the kitchen island. “Why should any of this matter to me? And why are you—”</p>
<p>“Because destiny is bullshit,” Tony answers immediately, propping himself against the island and hooking his fingers under Loki’s chin to tip his face upward, forcing their gazes to meet. “<em>Fate</em> is bullshit. Stop using it as a crutch or as an excuse to be an asshole. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. So if you really are planning on killing me, at least have the balls to do it because it’s what you want, not just what you think everyone else expects from you.” He bends to kiss Loki’s forehead, directly at his hairline, and then—“Oh, and fuck you for shunning my cooking, by the way. Last time I cook for your ungrateful ass. That bacon is awesome.”</p>
<p>He chuckles and goes back to loading the dishwasher, and all Loki can do is stare at his own hands in shame.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Show me.”</p>
<p>Loki had blinked in surprise when Tony first tossed the assortment of whips and crops and clamps onto the bed—<em>their </em>bed, as he had come to call it of late, distressing as that was. He’d barely stammered out a response before Tony explained that if he was supposed to understand why Loki seemed so petrified of touching and why he shied away from even the gentlest movements, maybe Loki should show him what he expected instead.</p>
<p>Loki had fought that, of course. He’d argued and protested and resorted to name-calling and all manner of childish distractions, but Tony had been nothing if not determined.</p>
<p>“Someone or something fucked you up,” Tony had said as he peeled his shirt off and tossed it aside. “You’re waiting for me to do it, and that’s not gonna happen. So maybe you need to get it out of your system or something, I don’t know. You won’t talk to me about it. So show me. Show me what happened.”</p>
<p>It was a ludicrous demand with even faultier reasoning underlying it, and yet Loki . . .</p>
<p>Loki obliged.</p>
<p>He always did for Tony.</p>
<p>His proud, stubborn human . . . he’d put up a good show at first, but his humanity, the thing Loki both cherished and hated most about him, was his undoing. He crumbled soon enough despite the bravery he showed, after his back had been carved to ribbons and his knees finally gave out. His entire body trembled, and his hands fisted against the rug beneath him, determined as he was not to sob any louder than was strictly necessary. Blood ran in thick rivulets down his shoulders and back, down his thighs, and Loki watched it as a man dying of thirst might watch a crystal-clear stream.</p>
<p>“Loki,” Tony had choked out at last, his voice as weakened as the rest of him, and Loki had growled under his breath and driven into him with renewed force, hips snapping a punishment against the one he would call his lover. Even with Tony’s pained cries ringing out in his ears—he won’t beg, won’t ask to stop, won’t use the safeword he made Loki memorize long ago for occasions exactly like this—Loki does not slow, and instead keeps pushing, as if every vicious act he visits upon the one who has become so precious to him will somehow say what his own mouth cannot.</p>
<p>It’s carried on this way for an hour, and Loki is beginning to wonder where it will end.</p>
<p>He finishes once, then again, then again, feeding just enough magic into Tony’s body to keep him conscious and hard the moment he finds release. It’s too much. Loki <em>knows</em> it’s too much. Feels delirious as release weakens him again and as Tony falls forward, head against the floor, groaning through his teeth in something that would be a scream if Tony had any less pride.</p>
<p>“Please,” Tony finally gets out, voice wet and cracking, and it’s enough—at last—to get Loki to retreat.</p>
<p>And look.</p>
<p>Curled in on himself in what can only be described as a protective gesture, Tony seems uncharacteristically small. Injured. <em>Scared</em>, and Loki only notices now that his chest has gone red with blood as well after pressing against Tony’s back.</p>
<p>His lover’s blood. Blood <em>he </em>has spilled—willingly, <em>gleefully</em>, all because the one person who cares about him couldn’t find another way to make him communicate.</p>
<p>But this is how Loki has always communicated, isn’t it? With anger and violence, with blood and sobs and desperation. It’s best that Tony sees it now, before he grows even more besotted with the vision of Loki he’s constructed in his head and allowed himself to believe is real.</p>
<p>Still. He’s done nothing, nothing to deserve this treatment, and that Loki could do it himself . . .</p>
<p>“I . . .” Loki trails off, hands hovering over Tony’s back as he calls on what few healing spells he bothered to learn while on campaign with Asgard’s forces so long ago. The fractured skin of Tony’s back begins to knit itself back together, wounds closing over the lacerations formed by the whips and by Loki’s own teeth and nails, evidence of an animal attacking its well-meaning master.</p>
<p>One hand drops too low and touches Tony’s right shoulder, and when the other man instinctively curls away from him, still shaking, Loki pulls back as though he has just touched open flame.</p>
<p>He’s done this.</p>
<p>He thinks of the many times Tony has grazed his lips so feather-light across his cheek, those teasing ghost impressions of kisses that make Loki shiver and yet also make him retreat further into himself because he doesn’t <em>deserve </em>this.</p>
<p>He thinks of Tony sleeping soundly next to him, sometimes deeply enough to snore quietly before he inevitably wakes himself and mutters a sleepy, grinning apology.</p>
<p>Bile burns hot and acidic in his throat, and Loki forces himself to his feet. No apology is there at the front of his mouth, no heartfelt pleas for forgiveness, nothing that seems fitting; what words are there, even for the famed silvertongue, when faced with the evidence of his own cruelty? Cruelty that, for that matter, was inflicted solely because someone dared to love him?</p>
<p>He is a rabid dog grown feral and deadly and deserves to be put down, and he almost says as much before deciding he’s said quite enough already tonight. Not verbally, no, but he’s said enough regardless, and Tony has certainly heard enough, judging by the violent shaking of his body, still curled upon itself on the floor.</p>
<p>Loki barely manages to teleport himself out of the building and into the alley before spilling the contents of his stomach onto the pavement.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>It takes five weeks for Loki to swallow his shame and return.</p>
<p>He tries the Malibu residence first. It was where they had last seen each other, and it’s where they’ve spent most of their time together, away from the noise and frantic movement in New York. The robot assistant, damned as it is to stand eternally vigilant over its master, assures Loki that “Sir” has not been in the house in the last month.</p>
<p>Still, Loki insists upon looking for himself, despite how his stomach roils in protest when he steps into the bedroom. The bed is made and nothing appears out of place but for the rug a few feet from the end of the bed; where it was once white and fluffy, decadently soft under Loki’s feet, it has been replaced with a short-pile rug in a midnight blue shade. Better to hide blood stains, Loki thinks, and his suspicion is confirmed when he toes at the corner of the new rug until it flips back onto itself. The pristine wooden floor underneath is mottled here and there with suspicious dark splotches. Loki squeezes his eyes shut against the mental image of Tony beaten bloody in his own home by his own lover, trembling on the ground and bleeding until he gathers the strength to crawl into the shower.</p>
<p>Reality may have gone differently for all Loki knows, but the likely—if imaginary—scenario is enough anyway to make him duck his head and summon his magic to pull him elsewhere, anywhere but here.</p>
<p>It takes another week for Loki to make it to New York.</p>
<p>He can teleport short distances with relative ease, longer distances if he conserves his magic and doesn’t waste it trivial nonsense; Midgard drains him quickly, its connections to Yggdrasil’s roots weak and thin and not dripping with the source of his magic like Asgard. He <em>could </em>have transported himself through space directly from Malibu to New York, but it would have left him dangerously unfit to protect himself, should the reunion go as he expects.</p>
<p>And while he won’t admit it even to himself, he needs the extra time to prepare himself.</p>
<p>So he walks. He charms blank slips of paper to look like bus tickets to get him across town. He takes on the form of a snake and slips into the back of a truck, and he spends the next two days sweating in the back of a cramped tractor trailer. He changes his form again, this time taking on the appearance of a teenager to elicit sympathy and a ride out of Missouri. He forgets humanity’s capacity for depravity at times, though, and so that particular tactic gets abandoned when he finds he’s expected to repay the strangers’ “kindness” with his body. One of those strangers will be found soon, he suspects; he didn’t go to great lengths to hide the corpse.</p>
<p>Finally, after hitching a ride on a ferry by disguising himself as a bird perched atop the boat railing, Loki arrives in New York City.</p>
<p>Getting into the Tower presents no more trouble than usual; Tony still hasn’t upgraded his technology to try to counter the unique energy signatures of Loki’s sorcery, an oversight that will likely be his downfall one day, so Loki moves with ease through the levels until he reaches the living quarters Tony claims for himself. He stops in directly in front of the elevator doors, even though he didn’t actually use the elevator itself, and watches as Tony paces from the large wall of windows to the bar and back, aimless, free hand waving animatedly as he speaks into the cellphone held against his ear.</p>
<p>“No. Yeah, I know. But it doesn’t matter if X, Y, or Z component is cheaper if it makes the whole system fail, you know? Don’t cut corners. That’s how you get a reputation for making cheap crap no one wants. Yeah, I <em>know</em>, but that’s marketing’s job to figure out how to—”</p>
<p>In the middle of a turn to begin another loop, Tony spots Loki and freezes. Not, Loki hopes, in terror.</p>
<p>“Hey, listen, I gotta go. We’ll pick this up on Monday, okay?”</p>
<p>Without waiting for a response, Tony lowers the phone and slips it into the pocket of his jeans, never once letting his eyes drift from Loki.</p>
<p>“Hey.”</p>
<p>Loki takes a step forward to test the space between them, each movement feeling as though it could be the one to crack the thin ice upon which they stand and send them crashing into the freezing cold depths below. Tony holds his position, every bit the warrior he claims not to be, chin jutting up in a kind of defiance Loki <em>should </em>find offensive, but which rather just endears the human to him even further.</p>
<p>They stare at each other for a lifetime, entire galaxies forming and dying between them in the time it takes for Loki to take another step closer. Another. Another. On and on until Tony finally flinches, prompting Loki to bare his teeth and lunge forward, a hand around Tony’s collar to turn him around and push him against the bar top. Tony moves willingly, even going so far as to cancel JARVIS’s suggested distress call.</p>
<p>Tony is shaking under Loki’s hand, and the familiar bile returns to the back of Loki’s throat at the same time as his breath quickens and his libido roars to life. He doesn’t bother explaining, doesn’t even say anything as he twists his fingers in the hem of Tony’s shirt and rucks it up toward his shoulders, eyes scanning frantically over what he expects to be a horror scene.</p>
<p>The skin is, for the most part, undamaged. There are a few scars here and there, old and faded and not Loki’s doing. The same smattering of freckles forming constellations across Tony’s back that Loki has mapped with his tongue and named nowhere but in his heart. The same jagged mark following the curve of his right shoulder blade; Tony claims it’s from taking a nasty spill off his bicycle as a child, and Loki never thought to question the explanation until now, when he’s only noticing for the first time that it looks hauntingly similar to the marks he knows are from his own hands.</p>
<p>“Most of it’s healed up,” Tony explains, his voice somewhat muffled with how he’s twisting away from Loki, bent awkwardly against the top of the bar. “I think you got most of it before you took off.”</p>
<p>Most of it. Not all, Loki’s mind fills in, along with providing helpful reminders of how Tony had looked: shivering, bleeding, trying his best to hide his face and the involuntary tears wetting his cheeks.</p>
<p>One of Loki’s black nails scrapes over a still-healing wound, one which will most likely scar, and he hears Tony draw in a sharp breath and hold it. His lips pull back into a sneer, regardless of the incongruous emotions behind the gesture.</p>
<p>“Is this love, Stark?” He presses the tip of his nail into the wound, making Tony go perfectly still. If he presses just a little more, he’s certain he can reopen the gash and bring fresh blood to the surface. “Do you truly think so? Do you think offering yourself to my whims will save you? That your simpering and your pathetic tenderness is either warranted or appreciated? You’ve offered me nothing but kindness, and see how I’ve repaid you. See how little you matter to me that I could treat you so cruelly.”</p>
<p>Tony’s back flexes, proof he’s finally letting out the breath he’d been holding, and Loki notices his fingers wrapping around the edge of the bar as if bracing himself. “If that had a bit of truth to it, if you believe it at all, you wouldn’t have looked so horrified last time once you realized what you’d done. You would have been back before now.” He twists around so that they are staring at each other, dark eyes wide and accusing—and yet, Loki notices, not angry. “And you wouldn’t sound like you’re on the verge of panicking and bailing out again.”</p>
<p>“I don’t want your pity,” Loki shoots back, crowding in closer until he can see flecks of spittle dotting Tony’s face when he forces the words out. “Even if I deserved it, I wouldn’t want it. I don’t <em>need </em>it.”</p>
<p>“I never said you did,” Tony answers with the same calmness that’s both soothed Loki’s rattled nerves in the past and set his teeth on edge as he waits for the physical blow or the emotional betrayal that’s sure to follow. “But you’re—look, I’ve been there, okay? Maybe not to the same extent, and yeah, the circumstances are pretty different. But the whole shattered-to-pieces thing? Feeling like you either want someone to treat you with kid gloves or just beat the shit out of you? Yeah. I know that one.”</p>
<p>He straightens up against the bar, and Loki loosens his grip enough to let him. When Tony reaches out for him, though, Loki winces, gaze dropping when he feels those familiar hands cupping the sides of his face.</p>
<p>“But you know what? You’re in luck, babe. I’m pretty good at fixing broken things. That’s kinda what I do, you know?”</p>
<p>“So I am a project to you.”</p>
<p>“A little bit, yeah,” Tony agrees with the same half-grin that Loki can never quite decide if he adores or wants to smack off Tony’s face. “You’re a lot of mismatched parts right now. There’s a lot of corrupted code and some extra crap that got added on, but you know, the underlying structure is still pretty solid. And it’s worth salvaging. It’s worth . . .” He trails off, tapping his index and middle fingers against Loki’s chest. “It’s worth stripping away all the stuff that’s been added over the years, because what’s underneath is still good.”</p>
<p>“Good,” Loki repeats in disbelief, voice edging on brittle laughter. “Whatever is good in me would not fantasize about your death. It wouldn’t have ever let me abuse you so. You asked me to show you what was in my heart, and I did, and there’s little there but cruelty and pleasure in seeing you bleed for me. That, <em>that</em>, Stark, whatever it is that you thin you see in me . . . that is not worth saving.”</p>
<p>The ever-present smirk softens into a barely there smile, every bit as soft as the touches and kisses Tony spoils Loki with so often.</p>
<p>“You showed me you’re kinda messed up, which I already knew. But you also showed me that you know when you’ve crossed a line and that you can stop yourself, that you can feel remorse, and yes, believe it or not, that you care. Forget all the other bullshit that’s been piled on top of it. <em>That’s </em>who you are. <em>That’s </em>worth saving.”</p>
<p>Loki doesn’t remember giving himself permission to pull Tony toward him, at least no more than he remembers allowing himself to rest his forehead against Tony’s and breathe in his scent—or allowing his mouth to open again and spill even more humiliating confessions.</p>
<p>“You deserve more, Tony. You deserve the Nine served to you on platters. You deserve every star and every moon. I can’t give you any of that. I’ll only give you more pain.”</p>
<p>Tony seems to consider this for a moment, and Loki almost allows himself to believe he’s finally gotten through to his mule-headed human. But then Tony crooks an eyebrow at him, sure proof of his thoughts running away with him.</p>
<p>“Then give me what you can. We both know you’re capable of more than just destruction. I’ve seen you do things with your powers that I really can’t explain. You make me laugh. You make me think. And yeah, you piss me off sometimes like no one else I’ve ever met. I like that, though. You keep me on my toes. Not too many people can. So give me that. Give me the parts of you that you don’t like and let me see more of the good parts. Let me see you geek out over your magic and laugh at stupid jokes and get excited about a good prank coming together. You’re more than just the bad parts.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know how true that is,” Loki murmurs, eyes sliding closed, and he shudders as Tony leans forward to press one of those devastatingly gentle kisses to the corner of his mouth.</p>
<p>“Then don’t you think you owe it to yourself to find out?”</p>
<p>Loki says nothing, doesn’t know <em>how </em>to answer that, so he folds his arms around Tony and clings. He realizes now, perhaps too late, that Tony’s body is fragile, but that won’t stop him from trying to shoulder Loki’s burdens as well.</p>
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